This Psi or ESP argument against the afterlife drives me bonkers, as ESP assumes one mind communicating with another.  But "mind" in a discreet sense is not an accepted part of human physiology.  In pure scientific terms, the concept of consciousness has been seen as a redundancy in the brain - a fallacy in fact.  Thus the idea that one person could read the mind of another is not at all a scientific one; certainly not explained by common physiology or knowns in anatomy.

So if one uses ESP to glean information, it proves contact outside of the physical plane (as we know it).  If a medium reads my mind, true it is not genuine contact.  But if my mind exists on a different plane than my body to be "read," then we are halfway to agreeing that we are more than our physical bodies, and the afterlife or mental planes are therefore within our reach.

Matthew

TO MATTHEW AND ALBERT:

The research repeatedly shows that when the medium believes and speaks as if she communicates with a discarnate spirit and gains paranormal information, she is in fact at times merely tapping the minds of living people.  That fact is a known, and so, it automatcally becomes the preferred explanation to genuine contact with a discarnate spirit, no matter what warm "fuzzies" or psychological certitude someone like Albert "feels."  The defender of channeling must establish cases in which no incarnate minds are available that have the paranormal information in question. 

Even if Matthew could track down such a case, postmortem survival is not the most plausible interpretation.  In the Gordon Davis case, "Gordon" not only portrays himself as dead through the medium, Blanche Cooper and verifies this with accurate paranormal information about himself; Gordon also describes in detail the layout of his future home before he has a chance to see it or know about it! Yet Davis is alive and present in London the whole time, contrary to Blanche's belief, and knows nothing about the channeling session!  Super-ESP, probably from Universal Mind, is the natural explanation of this rather than the view that Blanche tapped informatiom from Gordon's mind that Gordon lacked now, but would possess in the future.  Thus there is no reason to believe that information, paranormal or otherwise, preserved in Universal Mind indicates postmortem survival of an individual soul, particularly in cases in which that individual is still alive.

Don

This NDE deserves special attention:

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence10.html

After reading it, keep several things in mind.  The most impressive verification came after Dr. Rodonaia's return (see the bottom of the webpage).  I will quote:

George Rodonaia's Account of His Episode With an Infant During His NDE

More information concerning George's NDE account is described in Dr. Melvin Morse and Paul Perry's book entitled Transformed by the Light. Dr. Morse refers to George by his Russian name "Yuri". The following is an excerpt of Transformed by the Light which describes George's observation of an infant while George is out of his body.

"[During Yuri's NDE, he] could go visit his family. He saw his grieving wife and their two sons, both too small to understand that their father had been killed.

"Then he visited his next-door neighbor. They had a new child, born a couple of days before Yuri's "death." Yuri could tell that they were upset by what happened to him. But they were especially distressed by the fact that their child would not stop crying.

"No matter what they did he continued to cry. When he slept it was short and fitful and then he would awaken, crying again. They had taken him back to the doctors but they were stumped. All the usual things such as colic were ruled out and they sent them home hoping the baby would eventually settle down.

"While there in this disembodied state, Yuri discovered something:

"l could talk to the baby. It was amazing. I could not talk to the parents - my friends - but I could talk to the little boy who had just been born. I asked him what was wrong. No words were exchanged, but I asked him maybe through telepathy what was wrong. He told me that his arm hurt. And when he told me that, I was able to see that the bone was twisted and broken."

"The baby had a greenstick fracture, a break in the bone in his arm probably cause by having been twisted during childbirth. Now Yuri and the baby knew what was wrong, but neither had the ability to communicate the problem to the parents.

"Eventually the doctor from Moscow came to perform the autopsy on Yuri. When they moved his body from the cabinet to a gurney, his eyes flickered. The doctor became suspicious and examined his eyes. When they responded to light, he was immediately wheeled to emergency surgery and saved.

"Yuri told his family about being "dead." No one believed him until he began to provide details about what he saw during his travels out of body. Then they became less skeptical. His diagnosis on the baby next door did the trick. He told of visiting them that night and of their concern over their new child. He told them that he had talked to the baby and discovered that he had a greenstick fracture of his arm. The parents took the child to a doctor and he x-rayed the arm only to discover that Yuri's very long-distance diagnosis was right."


Matthew

Maybe we are asking the 'wrong' people about the afterlife. What else can be learned from those who are supposedly 'sleeping' babies? Just curious.

DocM wrote on Mar 18^th, 2010 at 10:51pm:

Hi

I also wonder why ADC is not more common. So I just went over to google it and there are over  2 million  citings for 'after death communication,' 708,000 for ADC message boards.

Since this is still a topic people think of as personal, I find it amazing that so many people are willing to share their interest and experience.  Also that so little formalized (academic? by professionals) study is being publicized.

Overall though, these search results seem to indicate alot of involvement with the topic. I haven't read the results so I accept that some is wishful thinking, but as we've seen from examples brought to this site, not all of them can be refuted.

Bets

Matthew,

The NDE communication from "the baby" about the physical reason for his crying tantrum is of course well beyond a baby's level of cognitive development.  So who or what is the source of this helpful communication?  The baby's guardian angel?  Universal mind?  The Bible echoes the ancient Jewish belief in the soul's preexistence, but not reincarnation.  Does this communication derive from the baby's oversoul?  Does a certain level of mental development have to occur before the oversoul is fully downloaded in the baby?  We can't answer these questions, but we should recognize the astounding breakthrough that would be acheived for many afterlife mysteries if we could answer them. 

The word "proof" pre-programs any afterlife quest for skepticism and should not be used.  Instead, we should focus on 2 goals: (1) the interpretation that makes the best sense of all the data; (2) the interpretation that is most "psychologically persuasive" to those who truly engage in honest and open inquiry with a passion to consider all the evidence pro and con.  In my view, NDEs as a whole pass these two tests and channeling fails them.

I never expected the questions I've raised in this thread to be definitively answered.  My real point is this: if they could be answered, afterlife research would be elevated to a level that would change the world and its outlook on human destiny.  When we can't answer the most important questions definitively, it is at least helpful to identify more subtle underlying questions that we might be able to answer or to identify more accurately the precisely reasons why our questions cannot currently be answered.

Don

First of all, I'm not a medium.

This being the case, when I make contact with spirits I don't do so with the purpose of passing on messages from a deceased person to a living person.

There was one occasion when a person I knew who had died made contact with me while I was meditating. He showed me what his astral home looked like, and what the home of one of his relatives looked like (another deceased person), and then gave me some information I was able to verify by doing an internet search.

Otherwise, when I communicate with spirits, one of the things that lets me know that more than telepathy with a human person is involved, is because the spirit I communicate will take me on some sort of non-physical adventure. For example, one time I wondered what it is like to be aware of multiple incarnations at the same time as is the case with--shall I say it--oversouls, and the being I was in contact with enabled me to experience myself as this large being who was aware of about twelve lives at the same time. It wasn't problematic to be aware of these multiple perspectives because I was a large being, yet still me.

I figure that if a person has a legitimate ability to communicate to deceased people for the sake of people who are still alive, it would be done according to what the divine powers that be consider appropriate.

Even if a deceased person has evolved and is more like an oversoul with multiple perspectives rather than the person he or she used to be, this wouldn't mean that this person (soul) would lose the ability to communicate with others.

After all, if beings with large perspectives can communicate to me (sometimes in really interesting ways that are beyond receiving a few thoughts), then why can't they communicate to other people, such as a person who decides to be a medium with sincere and honest intentions?

Doc-

Here's an actual example of something that happened to me that I consider ESP (and not access to the universal mind).  I'd like your comments.

A few years ago I signed up for a computer reading by Linn whom some of you know or know of.

She mentioned that I've been quite upset because of a breakup of a long time friendship with a friend.  She even correctly named him!

Of all the names she could have chosen, she picked the right one.  And it's not a common one like Bob or John or Bill.  She got it right the first time.

She urged me to reestablish the friendship because it was causing both of us to be upset.

Now, I don't remember if I was thinking of the relationship when she and I were online, but I might have.  I know for sure, however, that once she mentioned the problem, his name came to mind.

And then she named him.

Did she access the universal mind, or did my thinking of him enable her to pick it up?  Or was it an incredibly lucky, once in a million, guess?

I personally think somehow she locked into me rather than plucked it out of an immense universe of other minds and thoughts.

But then it's just my opinion.  In any case it was something I'll never forget.

R